Deputies: Row over $1 cigar sends mom, son, daughter to jail

Thursday

Mar 27, 2014 at 1:20 PM

By PATRICIO G. BALONApatricio.balona@news-jrnl.com

Israel Aguilera never thought stopping at a store at midnight to get his favorite Good Times White Grade cigar would land him into a heap of trouble.But it did.The clerk at Deltona Liquors II had already closed the register and told Aguilera he couldn’t make change for his $20 bill. When Aguilera insisted he wanted the cheroot, he said the clerk yelled at him to get change and come back. Upset, Aguilera said he pushed a display at the clerk.But the clerk, Elias Habbabeh, and Volusia County sheriff’s deputies tell another story.They say the 20-year-old tried to snatch the cigar, reports show. But the clerk was too quick. He moved the display case to prevent the theft.Then Aguilera got really angry, the report shows, throwing and hitting the clerk with another plastic display. He grabbed the clerk by the shirt — tearing it — and tried to drag him from behind the counter.“I am going to take my blunt,” Habbabeh said Aguilera told him. “I can’t believe he got so crazy.” After the clerk freed himself, Aguilera ran from the store — but he dropped his car keys. Again, the clerk was quick, grabbing the keys and running inside to call 9-1-1, reports detail.As deputies responded to the robbery call made at 12:26 a.m. Wednesday, Aguilera locked himself in his car and called for backup — his sister and mother, reports state.The first deputy at the scene heard a vehicle approaching the Fort Smith Boulevard store at a high rate of speed, reports show. The vehicle pulled into the store’s driveway and out jumped Amanda Ramos-Aguilera, 22, who started asking “Where is my brother? Where is my brother?” She ignored numerous commands from the deputy to get on the ground. When she got back into her car, the deputy feared she was about to take off recklessly, possibly endangering other deputies approaching on foot, the report shows. So he pulled her out of the car and placed her on the ground.After his sister was arrested, Israel Aguilera stepped out of the car and was secured, reports state. As deputies talked with him, another speeding vehicle approached and pulled into the store’s parking lot.Out jumped Brenda Aguilera, 42, the mother of the siblings. Deputies asked her to stay in her car, but she continued to walk toward her children and bumped a deputy with her chest, reports show. That got her arrested for resisting an officer without violence and for interfering with the responding deputy’s ability to investigate the robbery. The sister was arrested on the same charges. Israel Aguilera was charged with criminal mischief and robbery. All are out on bail, county jail records show.“How could I be stealing when I had 20 dollars and five cents?” Aguilera said.The value of the cigar that started the trouble: $1.05.